Week 22—Tuesday Matthew 5:43-48
Matthew 5:43-48
LOVE WITH LOVE UNLIMITED
Jesus breaks down another division—the division of dividing love—loving your neighbor and hating your enemy. And also the loving of those who love you and hating those who hate you. It must be Love Unlimited. He reminded his followers that that is the way God loves—God makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and unjust. God loves with Love Unlimited, and if you love that way only, “so can you be children of your heavenly Father” (Matt. 5:45, NEB).
This going down to the bedrock of undivided and undiscriminating love hits at the central division in human personality—loving only those who return love. For this discriminating love is not even love for it has a worm of self-interest eating at its heart. So it is self-defeating. You have to love with Love Unlimited or you don’t love. For limited love is Unlimited Selfishness. For one who loves only those who love in return really does not love the other persons—all one loves is what comes back from the other person, which is in essence, self-love, not love but selfishness.
And this kind of love Jesus expounds is not an imposition upon life from a high-sounding Sage or Potentate seated on a dictating throne of the universe—it is the actual revelation of God’s character and conduct. That is what God is and does. And this kind of love in God and persons is the only kind that will save the world. Admiral Sato, commander of the submarine fleet at Pearl Harbor said to me, “This verse got me. I couldn’t get into the kingdom of God because I was good, but I could get in if God loves like that—God makes the sun rise on the evil. That opened the door for me.”
O Jesus Lord and Savior, we thank you for this healing word—healing us at the place of our central sickness. For if our love turns sick, because it is turned into essential selfishness, then we are sick indeed. Heal us at this place. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: When God takes away my limitations in love, God takes away my limitations.